Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski and former justice minister Yaakov Ne'eman sent a strongly worded letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over the weekend blasting the firing of Rabbi Haim Druckman, a leading religious-Zionist leader, as head of the Conversion Authority.

The letter complained of the "public" and "unreasonable" firing of Druckman, saying it "sabotages the state's conversion process."

The writer is the founder and chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone Colleges and Graduate Programs, and chief rabbi of Efrat.

My Torah has been stolen away, hijacked, by false and misguided interpreters.

My Torah is crying because of rabbinical court judges who have forgotten that the major message of the Exodus from Egypt is for us to love the stranger and the proselyte.

My Torah is crying because these judges have, in the name of Torah, disrupted and possibly destroyed hundreds if not thousands of families of converts, whose children and even children's children were brought up and accepted as Jews - only now to learn that their forbears' conversions have been retroactively nullified.

I personally support non-Orthodox conversions as a means of joining both the Jewish people and the Jewish religion. I think that the state should register those who have converted in this way as Jews.

Nevertheless, I see no reason to obligate rabbis who do not feel that this constitutes valid conversion to recognize non-Orthodox converts as Jews according to their own religious precepts. In my view, this is a crucial internal religious matter that the state should stay away from.

Therefore, registration should be transparent, allowing those who do not accept such conversions as a way of joining the Jewish religion to know what the facts are.

…we need to thoroughly and creatively examine the question of joining the Jewish people in ways other than conversion.

It is important to ensure that such a process not be for the purpose of immigrating, and the proofs required for such a move should be as demanding, protracted and substantial as they are in conversion.

But they should not be religious in nature, nor should they be determined by religious officials.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens of Israel today are not recognized as Jews even though they have chosen to cast in their lot with the Jewish people, which many of them would gladly join in a formal manner if this could be done in a relatively simple and non-demeaning way.

One would like to see Israeli Orthodoxy make this possible. If it is not prepared to do so, secular Israel will have to risk a deep secular-religious rift by fully recognizing Reform and Conservative conversions performed in Israel and treating them as no less valid than Orthodox ones.

…Sooner or later, secular Israel will say: Enough. The decision of the High Rabbinical Court has brought that day closer.

…the basic worldview that underlies the ruling is doomed to failure - namely, the Orthodox establishment's pretension that it holds the sole key to entry into the Jewish people.

The demand that anyone who becomes Jewish must become Orthodox, rather than secular or traditional, implies that Orthodoxy is the "standard" of Jewish identity, and any other version of Jewish culture can perhaps be tolerated if absolutely necessary, but is not legitimate - and is certainly not of equal value.

If it fails to confront and overcome its adversaries, it will become marginalized from Israeli society and Jewish life.

…The long-term national repercussions of the conversion issue have made this a defining moment for religious Zionists.

…Religious Zionists must aggressively distance themselves from anti-Zionist haredim who concentrate almost exclusively on promoting their own parochial interests, refusing to assume the obligations of citizenship.

They must also condemn both the snowballing haredi draft exemptions and haredi unwillingness to earn a livelihood as being contrary to Jewish religious values.

They should demand that haredim at least be obliged to participate in some form of national service.

During the course of the gathering the rabbonim discussed the thousands of wholesale conversions performed every year in Eretz Yisroel, even though the "converts" have no genuine desire to keep Torah and mitzvas, which is bringing non-Jews into the fold under the cover of an apparent conversion.

The rabbonim also considered various ways to cope with this situation, such as reiterating calls to city rabbonim and marriage registrars to look into the Jewish status of individuals applying to marry.

They also praised marriage registrars from certain cities who do their job faithfully, thoroughly evaluating every applicant.

In the first part of the survey, participants were asked, “In your opinion, what is the most important criterion when deciding whether or not to convert someone to Judaism?”

Thirty-one percent said that they or their children need to serve in the army, 29% said that the commitment to abide by the commandments is more important and 28% said that the main criterion is if the applicant is offspring to an assimilated Jewish family. Twelve percent refused to answer the question.

The second question in the survey was, “If you had a non-Jewish friend interested in conversion, who would you want to convert them?”

Thirty-six percent chose a national religious rabbi who follows in the footsteps of the exiting conversion system’s leader, Chaim Druckman.

Twenty-six percent prefer an ultra-Orthodox rabbi and 25% would send their friend to a reform or conservative rabbi. Thirteen percent of the participants did not respond to the question.

Kaifeng Jews do not object to undergoing a "giyur l'chumra" - a conversion ceremony done for the sake of removing any doubt, in contrast to other groups such as Ethiopian Jews.

The girls describe their year in the conversion institute as stressful. "We felt we needed to learn because that's what we lacked," says Wang.

In contrast to other conversion candidates, they didn't feel insulted by being required to strictly observe Jewish commandments.

Michael Freund, the head of Shavei Israel, estimates the potential number of immigrants from Kaifeng to be no more than a few hundred. However, he described the community members as "people with very high motivation who we need to help them."

Neither the Israeli government nor the Jewish Agency currently encourages the immigration or conversion of Kaifeng Jews, but Jin Jin and Nina Wang believe that within a generation a proper community of Jewish Chinese immigrants will be established in Israel.

"Religious Zionism has lost its true substance and has become a cult," said MK Otniel Schneller (Kadima) Wednesday at the Religious Zionism conference on education, the economy and society.

"The fight for the Land of Israel is important, but hailing it as the sole theme makes Religious Zionism a cult. I know many of you will resent this definition, but this wasn't the way taught by the Religious Zionism I grew up on."

"Religious Zionism cannot stay closed up within itself. If it does it will suffocate," he concluded.

The specter of early elections has thrown the splintered, embattled religious-Zionist camp into a mad rush to somehow consolidate its ranks and present a unified front.

[Dr. Asher Cohen of Bar-Ilan University] hopes to bring into a new religious-Zionist party charismatic rabbis, such as Yuval Cherlow and Benny Lau, together with female leaders, such as Yaffa Gisser of Bat Ami and Emunah chairwoman Liora Minka, and municipal-level politicians, such as Tirat Carmel Mayor Arye Farjun.

Concerns that the High Court of Justice might put a stop to the construction of new homes in the West Bank settlement of Ofra has led to the extraordinary step of keeping the work going seven days a week, irrespective of the religious prohibition against labor on Shabbat.

The decision relies on a religious ruling by Ofra's rabbi, Rabbi Avi Gisser, aimed at expediting construction so homes can be occupied before a possible court intervention.

Rabbi Gisser's ruling was made possible since all of the construction workers at the site are non-Jews. They include foreign and Palestinian laborers

As for the halakhic reasoning, Gisser cited a Talmudic ruling (in Tractate Gittin) that says that the commandment to settle the land of Israel overrides the principle of not engaging non-Jews to work on Shabbat.

Jerusalem City Hall has begun a project that is a first in Israel, seeking to place solar panels on the roofs of municipal and public buildings around the city towards enhancing the Shabbos.

The initiative comes from the mayor himself, Rabbi Uri Lupoliansky, who hopes the NIS 100 million price tag will bring a solution to the growing number of the city’s residents who are seeking alternative electricity for Shabbos and Yomim Tovim, not wishing to benefit from the chilul Shabbos of the Israel Electric Company (IEC).